We all know Einstein’s quote: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
And why the blog is critical of shakers and movers, i.e., our economic managers and legislators – as well as our top companies, MSMEs, and the agribusiness sector.
We need leadership to overcome our populist – or socialist – bent.
If we still don’t recognize it, populism is an invitation to tyranny. There is no free lunch.
And in the olden days, royalty was an expression of tyranny. And why America’s founding fathers made sure they don’t touch majesty ever again.
And, not to forget, the Roman empire, the forebears of the Vatican.
In other words, we must not be surprised that Rizal created the character of Padre Damaso.
Sadly, despite the over a century since Rizal’s time, we Filipinos are yet to leverage his genius. We submit to tyranny because we love it.
Unsurprisingly, our elders created the myths of Juan Tamad and Bondying. Recall even Filipino-Americans voted for Trump.
The party that pontificates personal responsibility runs away from responsibility. Think of the doctrine of command responsibility. And this guy was supposed to be the most powerful person in the world because of American exceptionalism.
Let’s dissect the above assertions.
Let’s start with how we bastardized the buzzword we call “inclusive.” How quickly we forget how much we abhor the crab mentality.
And that is why we continue to wonder why decades ago, Thailand borrowed our economic development plan and executed it successfully while we failed.
Indeed, we had reason to believe we were more sophisticated than our neighbors. Until the Asian Tigers showed the world how they could leapfrog – not just us – but the wealthy nations too.
And that is why the blog addresses us in the elite class. Our sophistication is not a ticket to prosperity.
I know. Why? My old MNC-company is American, and they saw us as ahead of our neighbors. I owe it to our perceived sophistication that I became a regional manager.
Yet, it is high time we come down to earth. “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
That is why the blog keeps raising that we must recognize our neighbors’ successes and – this time – borrow their model but figure out how to execute it successfully.
Sadly, that is a tall order.
Consider our instincts: We are parochial and insular. We value hierarchy and paternalism and rely on political patronage and oligarchy that ours is a culture of impunity.
We can’t even look outward!
Unsurprisingly, we can’t distinguish between cause and effect that we can’t see beyond poverty – and into development. It explains our crab mentality, our inability to prioritize.
The evidence? Unctad rates poorly PHL capacity to tap resources; Elijah Felice Rosales, BusinessMirror, 10th Feb 2021.
We are so reliant on political patronage and oligarchy that we can’t leverage what this world has to offer. “Beg for Western money and technology,” said Lee and Mahathir to Deng.
Look outward and prioritize. But first, “where do we want to be”? In other words, we must learn to forward-think.
We must go to school on the Asian Tigers – and forget that we, especially us in the elite class, are more sophisticated than our neighbors.
And Oxford University, for example, has a course aptly called “From Poverty to Prosperity: Understanding Economic Development.”
It is not the first time the blog raised this course: “How can poor societies become prosperous and overcome obstacles to do so? Professor Sir Paul Collier is one of the world’s leading scholars on this question, and in this economics course, you will have the opportunity to learn from him directly.”
Let’s get back to Unctad. “THE Philippines has scored dismally in a United Nations index that measures the capacity of economies to take advantage of their resources to produce goods and services.
“The Philippines was rated 122nd out of 193 economies in the Productive Capacities Index (PCI) published by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad).
“The country scored 29.81 on a scale of up to 100, as it struggled to compete in the areas of information and communications technology, transportation, and structural reforms.
“According to the Unctad, the PCI surveys the productive resources, entrepreneurial capabilities, and production linkages that together determine the capacity of a country to produce goods and services and enable it to grow and develop.
“The Philippines flunked in these categories: institutions, 47.07; human capital, 43.99; energy, 27.86; structural change, 20.02; transport, 12.82; and ICTs, 10.35.
“When pitted against Southeast Asian neighbors, the Philippines ranked seventh in the region to lead only Lao PDR at 138th, Cambodia at 142nd, and Myanmar at 158th.”
What is the bottom line: We cannot create the ecosystem necessary to produce goods and services and enable the Philippines to grow and develop?
The reality is a nation with minimal resources cannot generate optimal outcomes if it can’t figure out what optimal is in the first place.
Consider: How many industry road maps have we been working on over the years? It smacks of the crab mentality. We are not a Ferrari that can go from 0-100 kph in a few seconds.
Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize.
Do we want to get ahead of AI, for instance? We cannot even move from voice to software development in the BPO industry, and we think we can leapfrog AI expertise?
That is too academic – logical yet linear and incremental. That is not how the real world works. Experience is the best teacher, i.e., not a unilateral paradigm but nurtures forward-thinking and lateral and creative thinking.
Recall that my old MNC-company is over 200 years old. We had a technology center populated by a thousand scientists. Yet, a partner, a small private R&D lab ran by two Ivy professors, developed the technology that put us ahead of the competition. [That is not uncommon. Pfizer partnered with two Turkish-German scientists in developing the COVID-19 vaccine while another major drug company, Merck, failed.]
And when we geared up to conquer the global market, we pilot-tested “the ecosystem” we pulled together in three countries – we considered representative of the bigger world. And we learned a lot from the experience to develop the global game plan in phases – until we got to over 200 countries.
The outcome is the only consumer packaged brand that reached almost 70 percent of global households and a dominant market share.
But what about our MSMEs. That is why the blog keeps relating the story of my Eastern European friends. They are a pain in the neck of Western giants. In other words, the West does not have all the answers. Look at the Trump impeachment or Brexit.
And for our purposes, we must not take political patronage and oligarchy as the ticket to prosperity.
Then consider the Asian Tigers. They are all major export players. And in the case of Vietnam, the latest to overtake us among our neighbors, their top export industries are similar to ours, computer-related equipment.
Instead of dreaming about AI expertise at this time, we must first leverage our top export industries. We have a far greater chance to attain a quantum leap in this space if we can focus and prioritize.
That is a broad stroke attempt to explain how to leverage big data and dive into analytics.
To overcome the crab mentality, we must recognize that populism is not the Philippines’ way to grow and develop.
And then we must learn to forward-think. It is not to merely address poverty but to traverse poverty to prosperity. Where we want to be is to be a prosperous nation. And we can start with raising GDP by $200 billion. A 6%-7% growth rate does not define prosperity. And $200 billion does because we know we will be as rich if not richer than Malaysia.
Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize.
We can then line up the other industries that make up our top exports, including agribusiness, which means we must learn from the Pearl River Delta economic development zone.
Our current export processing zones are not the answer. We must aim for a competitive advantage.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Gising bayan!
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